


Uno Poenitentia(Faust, an Erotic Retelling)

by unopoenitentia



Category: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe, Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-10
Updated: 2018-09-19
Packaged: 2019-06-08 02:59:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,065
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233868
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unopoenitentia/pseuds/unopoenitentia
Summary: Gretchen has just met Faust and finds him compelling. Though she is a virgin, and a woman of God, she finds herself thinking about him unchastely.





	1. One

That such a young man presided as proprietor of estates would strike any seasoned individual as odd, though perhaps he was a prodigy. Lord knows enough of those were around these days. Near every young man was a genius of some sort, be it musical, due to his authorship, or his business and political saavy. In reality, Gretchen knew, most men were merely given positions and praised on the bare minimum of capabilities. Mediocrity hires.

Still. She could not get this one young man off her mind. The proprietor, and manager of Valentin's estate, and thus, of the well being of his sisters, Gretchen and Bette, as well as their carer from birth, Marthe was entirely in control of them, and Valentin, the only man left in the family has not returned from the east. 

And thus it was, that Gretchen found herself, to her immense chagrin, hoping the young proprietor and his flamboyant partner would make their estate a visit.  She could not explain, but when she'd accidentally tumbled into him on her way back from the market, something had sparked in her. Maybe the softness of his skin, golden and youthful... or the hardness of his muscular and wiry form. Or maybe it was his eyes. He looked familiar in some way. His deep, honey brown eyes seemed to sparkle with knowing and it hit her in her core.

Now she sat in before her vanity and considered the box that sat, until now, untouched by wary hands. An old thing, it was varnished by the hands of many folk to a thick, mahogany patina, and the crudeness of the cut of the wooden lengths dovetailed into one another gave it a slightly lopsided bearing. The only sign that it may have been something more noble were the delicately carved metal corners and fastening on the lid's exterior. A miniature floral tapestry had been hammered into the old metal. Gretchen reached out and lightly ran a pale hand over the lid. The grain was thick and pleasantly rounded to the touch. 

The proprietor's working partner had arrived two full suns ago and left it in the solid grip of Marthe's calloused fingers. She shivered at the memory of him. Refusing to find herself, a single young woman, face to face with the man, she had merely watched as he placed the box in Marthe's grasp. He was tall, with a noble bearing that seemed somewhat older than his years. Thin, and wily, he'd flicked his long fingers out as he bowed before Marthe, his oddly dark eyes flashing and darting about their humble apartments. He was somewhat arrogant, as he let his lips curl into a grin. The way he looked Gretchen up and down clenched her stomach in the most unpleasant way. He did not leer, for that would be far below his parentage, but she felt exposed. His lewdness of the intelligence on his face bothered her and he had an air about him that was at once cloying and bitter. 

Marthe had unconsciously hiked her skirts as she stepped forth into the worn frame of the door. A hot blush across her face betrayed her and the man bit his lip. He was polite in his diction alone and Gretchen felt herself disgusted. Marthe, surely, could see through the facade, right? But no. No sooner had he placed the box in her hands then he leaned in to whisper something that turned Marthe redder than the rhubarb in their garden. 

She shivered again and nervously ran her hands over her face, like a cat cleaning itself. Letting out a deep exhalation(she'd been holding her breath and hadn't noticed) and slowly unclasped the box. In the candle's glow glinted a pearl necklace, a slight greyish tint sparkling as the flame danced about. The box and the necklace remained a mystery for a breath longer until Gretchen saw a small calling card inconspicuously tucked into the velveteen padding set up against the wall. The proprieter's gentleman's card! It was surely his name written upon the thing. She held the card out and peered closely at the writing upon it. 

“Mr. Johannes F.   
German Estates Proprieter  
112 Hagentorwahl  
Hildesheim ”

She pondered the card again. That was rather close to the school. She had ventured to that district but rarely as she had little reason to go there. If only Valentin were here. Sitting alone in this stuffy house with only her childhood wetnurse and child-sister for company left her wanting for companionship, and someone to share her thoughts and desires with. Valentin had always been there when they were younger but once he became a man, he lost interest in the feminine whims and fantasies of his younger sister. All of her childhood girlfriends had found men of their own as soon as they could, most marrying off at 16. Yet Gretchen was a warier girl and she always had been.  She was loathe to get into trouble as a young girl and preferred to stay out of the way of boys in her teen years.  She devoted herself solely to to her faith, keeping a well-worn bible by her bedside. She wrote in a prayer journal every night before bed, carefully alternating from a black gall ink to red when she felt a prayer had been answered. As far as she was concerned, God would let her know when the right man had come along. Now, she sat alone before this gift from a young and well-created man who made of himself a secure career and a sturdy carriage and she had none but God alone to share her thoughts with.

She picked up the necklace then, letting each pearl have its moment illuminated by the candle flame. The flame itself seemed to start with excitement as if it could sense the beauty of the pearls. She inhaled deep the musk of age that wafted from the ancient box. Her stomach twisted pleasantly. The necklace was a gorgeous piece of work with the tiniest, and most femininely crafted of clips. Dangling from the centre was a small citrine. The thing must have costed Mr. Johannes F far more than a woman of her ranking could dream of affording. It was far too precious a gift for someone like her, who, in many ways felt like a child still. Young men had suited her in the past, and she had always easily sent them away. 

“I must stay home to care for Bette, Marthe. I must sell my bread when I can. I have no time to think about men and marriage, not with Valentin gone to serve.”

She justified her disinterest with feeling called to more worthy tasks. She gardened, she baked and sold her bread, she cared for, fed, bathed, kissed, and cuddled Bette and nurtured her little soul so she may grow healthy and stout. Men, simply, were not within her sphere. But she could not wrest her thoughts from straying toward Mr. F and his strange partner. She felt herself wound up at the thought of him and the memory of the way he'd looked the week before his partner had appeared with the peculiar gift. Tall, hair black as pitch, and skin and curves like a sphynx. She'd startled, dropping her parasol and with overlarge but no less deft hands and a feline agility, he'd stooped to apprehend the run away parasol as it skittered down the street in a gust of wind. 

When he spoke, his voice, though oddly pitched, was soft and plush. Thinking about it now made the diaphenous hairs on her pale, little arms, rise and catch the glow of the candle, which now danced delightedly to and fro. She unclasped the pearl necklace and wrapped it around her slender neck, watching her task carefully in the vanity mirror. 

Oh, the thing was beautiful! It's facets tinkled in the happy flame, the citrine in the centre hanging just above the gentle swell of her breasts, glittering like frozen fire. She closed her eyes and let out a hum. She let her mind wander to a fantasy, herself as a gentlewoman, in a pale yellow gown bespeckled with little blue flowers and on her arm Mr. F....

The red glow of her eyelids suddenly went dark, drawing her out of her reverie. A draft had pinched out the candle and left her in darkness. It was well past midnight now anyway and her day always started just before dawn. She found her way to her bed, adjusted her shift(though still thinking of Johannes, she left her hands graze her curves a little too long) and settled into bed. Lying her head on her pillow, she whispered a prayer to God asking him for guidance.


	2. Uno Poenitentia Ch. 2.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Faust falls in love with Gretchen, and thus seals his fate with Mephistopheles

Mephistopheles was a creature of means. He was industrious, cunning, and above all, persuasive. From the moment he appeared, wearing the skin of a shuck, and followed Dr. Johannes Faust into his study, there was no going back. Indeed, the deal was done long before the wily creature had ever made eye contact with the doctor. He stood before Johannes now, in the veneer of human maleness, a tall man with wide and opaque eyes. There was little readable sensibility or sensitivity within them and they reflected no apparent mood. To Johannes, it was almost as if his little familiar had deliberately taken the form of a man of intelligence to mock him. He bat his pretty lashes and grinned widely at Johannes and bowed dramatically.

“Well then? ” Johannes asked hurriedly...   
“Is it done? You gave her the present?”

Mephisto giggled, a tinkly little sound that smacked of something otherworldly.

“Do not mock me, you animal.”

“Oh calm yourself. All in due time, my lad. Yes, yes, I have handed the gift over. Pretty little thing it was, and your girl isn't half bad herself. ”  
Johannes sighed loudly, the tension in his body leaving one moment, but returning just as strongly. He squinted, scrunching the fine features of his face in thought. 

“How long will it take?”

“Like I said, all in due time. The world beyond works as it will. We are at the mercy of Fate and God now.”

“Don't speak to me of God, Mephisto.”

“You'll soon be calling me your dear, sweet Mephisto, once the full moon of the month sinks below the horizon. Then, and only then will our little trinket's magic have its spell fully cast. First she has to wear it, for it bears a stone that must meet with the flesh of her breast.”

“You speak in riddles you know.”

“Maybe. But that's why you called me is it not? To learn. To quench your mind's never ending thirst? ”

It was all well and surely done now, wasn't it? Johannes pondered the man before him before answering.  He felt the gnawing ache of it every minute of the day. Sunlight had begun to irritate him, and moonlight even worse. He'd been old and retired from working directly with the patients of the city. He spent most of his hours when he wasn't lecturing(and God what a drudge that had become) locked away in his study, staring wanly at the dog-eared and frayed edges of old textbooks. Worthless dross it all was. Just mindless chaff written to massage the egos of privileged men. It meant nothing. He'd been a doctor like his father and apprenticed in the same schools of logic and medicine but when the great sickness had struck, he'd realised that it was in vain. Their potions and serums, poultices and salves had no basis to them and more patients had likely died of poisoning by doctor, than of the plague itself. Johannes had quit tending patients and retreated to the cold comfort of books and lecture halls then but it all seemed a wasted effort now. 

In his desire for peace, for something to quench his ever-growing thirst for knowledge, for more, for love, for anything that relieved the dull, grey ache of numbness inside him, he'd turned to the magic books. He was sure it was nonsense and he felt more than foolish, as a man of books and science. But, really, he thought, what is the difference between magic and science? It seemed that the only difference, when all seemed left to chance and God's will alone, was what mortal men in lofty places decided. And of what use was the mind of mortal men, always bound to abase themselves and be blinded by their egos? 

Doctor Johannes Faust had seen the rise and fall of many an abased mortal man. Whether by ego, or by pride, each and every single one seemed to lap up from the dish of misery, leaving them perpetually unhappy and always begging for more. This doctor could not allow the same fate to take him. And so, by the light of the full moon, bright and pale, Faust had opened the book, a dusty and worn tome with faded ink written on velum and bound with sinew. Perhaps it was even as old as the first plague. Within its pages, wrapped with fluorishing sigils, Faust had found the key. It was not until he set his eyes upon Gretchen, that he'd begun to feel the real power and weight of his choice. The way she had filled his mind and made his pelvis ache so bittersweetly began to torture him. The sweetness of the glow of her skin in the sun, and her unassuming and gentle carriage, all beneath blushed cheeks and full lips. 

His charge, bound to him by sigil work, and a blood-wet signature now stood before him, all pride and cunning. Mephistopheles took three long-strided steps around Faust's cluttered desk, his coats swishing with the breeze that caught under him. The corner's of his paled lips turned up sharply. 

“I told you that I could bring you anything you so desired.” he cooed then,  
“But I ask for your loyalty and a favour in return. ”

Faust pondered the devil. Mephistopheles was oddly thin, the skin of his fingers stretched like a  drying pelt over the bones. He was all odd angles, a hint that he was something not of this world. It was especially noticeable in the flat blackness of his eyes but now they came to life and sparkled in the candlelight. Faust felt a shiver move through him like a ghost flitting through the wall of an ancient fortress.

“Johannes??? ”Mephistopheles purred, urging Faust to answer.

“Yes, yes. Whatever you ask just as long as you bring her to me as you promised once the full moon passes. ”

He found it impossible to deny any request of Mephistopheles'. He held some sway over Faust and he found it a heady fog to wade through, especially when he looked into the demon man's eyes. 

“Then, let me out of this stuffy old room. These parchments stink of death and the dust clogs the lungs of this inferior pastiche of a human form. ”

Faust then remembered the sigil at the door, locked and sealed the full way round with salt. He stood up and strolled to the sigil and lazily kicked an open pathway through the salt with the toe of his shoe. 

“Is that all then? ”he asked

“Assuredly for now. Unless you summon me once more I shall return the night of the full moon.”

A puff of black smoke with green sparks rose up in the air, obscuring the hellspawn. When it dissipated, he was gone, leaving the doctor to his lonesome, and to ponder his decisions, and to think about the sweetness of Gretchen's moist, peach-ripe lips.


	3. Uno Poenitentia Ch. 3. A Meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magic is afoot on the full moon.

Gretchen had not taken the necklace off. She was dazzled by the luxurious sparkle she felt too rich for her means by far;  but moreso was she dazzled by the gifter. Day and night, rain or shine, cloud or clarity, the doctor was on her mind. He was in her daydreams and found her alone in the night; it was most unseemly for a virgin handmaiden of God. When her mind and body roved between the lands of sleep and restless wakefulness, Gretchen had many times dreamt of the delivery man and his wide, prideful grin. There seemed to be an air of brimstone about it,  in the smoke of his prevarications. She called out within the between-world, the just before the dream-world. As the man slunk ever closer, his long fingers clawed with yellowed nails, Gretchen entreated. No, not God, but the doctor. Dr. Johannes Faust.  Even the name sent a clenching shiver through her pelvis and shot up through her heart like lightning. Her hands cold and aching to be held by none other than Faust's only warm, golden ones.  And in her strange dreamlife, oddly built angels whispered things she could not remember upon waking. They chanted and intoned a strange pitchless melody. Before her a puff of purple smoke and out would step her Faust, his skin the same glowing sandy tone as the citrine that hung from her pearls. The greenish sea would grow around them and his yellow-toned voice would purr softly in her ear. All of her would be soothed by his touch and sound. The strange song in his voice, like the choir of heaven's angels themselves, would haunt her. 

And she would awake, alone and shivering in dawn's early chill. Alone again, a certain melancholy would drape itself over her and set the course for her day. Bette had grown impatient with her sister's lack of enthusiasm. The strangeness that had settled so uncomfortably in her breast now clung to her day and night. Marthe scoffed.

“Just go to the damn boy's home then. Young fools in love. ”she snapped, a cloud of dust flying up to choke out the vision of her from the porch. Behind it, she shot Gretchen a wink in jest.

It had not been that simple, however. When she'd tried to find a proprietor's office, she found nothing. Had he lied about his vocation? But moreso when she came upon the grounds with the numbers to match the card, a terrible disturbance came over her and she found herself too afraid to approach the old oaken door that sat on horrid, fat and creaky hinges.   
She attempted this several times in the coming weeks, each time something in her blocking her path, only for her to return home morose to have her recurring dream. 

°°°  
Overhead, the moon flickered behind the glowing veil of clouds, so full was she that both Faust and Mephistopheles were under the spell of her lumined magics. 

“Tonight's the night, my friend. ”Mephistopheles said, his flat irises, dense and jet as scrying pools, turned up to reflect the full roundness of the moon. Fireflies trembled about them, a syncopated rhythm of lights careening in and out of view amidst their mating dance.   
“See how all the world's alive with desire, my master.” His words slithered smoothly about them, as each sat side by side in the swaying grass, the dew on each tip prismed in the moonlight. 

Johannes hummed a half-attentive response to his charge and genie. The moon, Selene, enchanted him and sent little trills about his flesh as he turned his face up to her. His long lashes so glitter, thought Mephistopheles, much prettier in the boyish glow of love than the parched flesh that hid behind his long professor's beard before. He marvelled at how lucky he was to work his hell-magic on this so favoured of God's earthly souls. In Faust, his desire and longing was so vast, so keen, that it seemed to fill Mephistopheles. Some men, God's most favoured, held the sharpest of sufferings within their souls, and though it prettied their faces, like cherubic angels, neath curly fuzzles on their blushing cheeks, it also made them the ripest fruit for the devil's plucking. All sweet Adams were they. His sweet Faust, the ripest fruit of them all. The devil will have him yet. Mephistopheles stretched his thin lips languidly, running his hard nails through the pointed beard on his chin. 

“The moon is full and at her zenith now, Mephisto. Is it yet time for you to bring me to my woman? ”

“Your woman, eh? Do not sell the pelt before you shoot the bear. I am afraid this second chance at youth has gone to your head with the same impulsivity you human boys all share. ”

“Do not play with me, you creature of chaos.” Johannes was not in the mood for talk or philosophising. He was in the mood to hold his sweet girl under the moon and bite her lips. 

“Well then you lazy fool. Let your loyal subject do as ye commands. Up you get. ”Mephisto twittered. Johannes roused himself to follow the swirl of dust that kicked up and moved around the demon man as he walked off into the distance. 

°°°

“Its a fearful night all of the sudden, Gretchen. I must say.” Marthe mused, more than a hint of displeasure in her tone as it tinkled around the splash of water her hands were submerged in. The dirt-smeared kitchen window overlooked the gaslamp glow of the old city street their house sat behind. The moon was eaten up by marching clouds, bit by bit, until its glow was sufficiently snuffed out, leaving the sky a dulled black above them. Droplets of water began to spit against the window before the roar of thunder started Marthe and quickened Gretchen's pulse. 

“Gretchen! Mama Marthe!!! ”came Bette's tiny, nervous voice from the second floor. 

“That child will not sleep a wink now, Lord have mercy on us tonight, Margarete. ”Marthe tutted. Gretchen noted the usage of her full name, a sure sign to keep her head down. Bette cried out again and Marthe, sighing a long suffering sigh, dropped the scouring pad she was holding into the sink of greyed water. 

“Go. I'll finish the cleaning, Marthe. ”

“Well that's a small miracle, I suppose.” Swaying her wide hips, she huffed and creaked up the narrow stairwell, leaving Gretchen alone to finish the washing up. She heard another crack of thunder. A shiver went through her and the hairs on the back her neck tingled. She shuddered and shook it off. Nothing to be done on a night like this but to enjoy it. She relished the alone time she had while Marthe soothed Bette and could hear Marthe's sweet and rich voice emanating from the stairwell singing a song she always sang to soothe the children, from Gretchen's early youth. Despite the unpleasant feeling that burbled inside her, she listened to the song and began to hum along.

“Thoughts are free, who can guess them?  
They fly by like nocturnal shadows.  
No man can know them, no hunter can shoot them  
with powder and lead: Thoughts are free!”

Another loud crack of thunder, and a blinding flash of lightning lit up the dim, little kitchen, interrupting Gretchen's song. Somewhere in between the thunder echoed as a pounding on the door. 

 

The candles on her vanity burn out one by one, next to the empty pages of her prayer journal. Gretchen's skin bubbled with a chill. The knocking on the door rumbled again. This was not her imagination, and her sister and wet nurse were occupied. Rising, and gathering the gossamer fabric of her dress into tiny bunches within her fingers, Gretchen made her way down the stairs to the door. The cracked paint that lifted from the wood seemed to vibrate with the knocking. She moved toward the door, aiming her right eye at the thick, green-glass peephole. Within the tiny window, two men stood. One of them was the unpleasant man who had been to the home before, his form unpleasantly thin and angular, his eyes bright and lively. But it was his companion who turned her stomach in a roil, like the waves on the tide before a storm. Faust. She gathered herself together and peered out. The young man's face was nervous, his skin, though dark in the night, was rich and velvet. The black hair on his head a tangle, as if someone ran their hungry fingers through it. Her heart pummelled her ribcage, trumming in her ear like songbirds' wings. It was him...


End file.
